12. Witness Stones
I asked Snowy to search my contact records for my old classmate, Thomas. We both knew Sandy Summers. We had all been classmates.
Her eyes brightened, then dimmed again.
As though she had first placed the phrase old classmate into a safer category, then decided whether it counted as a risk for now. She did not immediately ask why I wanted to find him. Nor, as she once would have done, did she suggest I use a more neutral social contact instead.
Since returning from the Racecourse, she seemed to have learnt another, quieter kind of cooperation: not making the decision for me, only lighting the road half a step ahead so I could choose whether to step onto it.
“I’ll run a social risk estimate first,” she said. “Two usable contact routes found. Recommendation: meet in a public place. Low risk.”
I nodded.
“Arrange it.”
Snowy gave a soft response, folded her wings slightly, and began searching through old communication records. She always searched quietly, as though she were not looking through my contacts, but trying to find which node in a vast net had not yet completely broken.
A few seconds later, she displayed two contact methods. One was an old email address. The other was a work account linked to a public social platform.
She chose the lower-risk option, sent a short standard invitation, then read it aloud to me.
“Long time no see. I’ve been sorting through some old things recently and wondered if we could have a drink and chat. Are you free? — Paul.”
She paused and looked at me.
“Is that all right?”
“Yes.”
After sending it, she said nothing more. She only tagged the invitation as:
[Old acquaintance contact | explainable as career-reorganisation extended networking]
She was always like that.
Even when I went looking for a secondary school classmate, she first had to give the whole thing a name more likely to survive.
While waiting for a reply, a short fragment of an old scene suddenly surfaced in my mind.
It was a youth leadership camp.
At night, several of us sat under the camp lights, eating cup noodles from toothbrush mugs. German bridge cards slapped onto the wooden table, then slid apart, the sound like small stones dropped into water.
We talked late into the night, until the topic suddenly turned to whether anyone liked someone.
Thomas threw the question at me, his tone halfway between joke and interrogation.
“Do you like any girl?”
For one second, I wanted to say a name.
Sandy.
But I did not.
I swallowed the name back down, like holding a sweet too hard at the root of my tongue, afraid that biting it would make a sound.
In the end, I only said:
“Needs to study.”
Clever Turtle, perched on my shoulder at the time, yawned and coldly tossed out a sentence:
“What you’re best at is swallowing words like sashimi.”
The sentence flashed past, like someone tapping the depths of my memory with a fingertip, then quickly retreating into darkness.
But it was enough.
Enough for me to understand that some habits had not begun now.
The present me had merely become more practised at the old skill of not daring to speak, not being able to speak, and simply swallowing the words first.
Thomas replied quickly.
We agreed to meet at the White Dove Exchange Room. In the past, the place had been called the Queen’s Arms. The pub had become an exchange room.
Once the name was washed clean, the risk became easier to manage.
As though, if the vocabulary were healthy enough, whatever happened inside would become more harmless too.
It was a very quiet basement venue. The lights were bright to exactly the right degree, as if deliberately allowing the system to see people’s expressions clearly. The music was not loud, but always wore every sentence down a little, grinding it into a shape less likely to form fluctuation.
The tabletops were pale grey. Even the coasters looked freshly disinfected.
Abstract images of moving white doves were projected on the wall, their wings opening and closing. After a while, they gave me a strange feeling: this was clearly a place for people to talk, yet every second seemed to be reminding you that communication, too, should be compliant.
When I arrived, Thomas was already sitting by the wall.
On the table were two bottles of diet soda. Fine bubbles rose through the clear bottles. The labels read alcohol-free, as though every ingredient that might once have made someone lose control had been removed, leaving only the legal ritual.
He raised a hand, as though placing all the conversations we had failed to have over the years back onto the table first.
“I don’t even remember when you started drinking these,” he said with a smile.
I smiled too.
“Legal things go down more easily.”
Beside Thomas stood his agent.
It was not an ordinary speaker, but a small humanoid puppet dressed as though ready to go on stage at any moment, holding a microphone. Its metallic shell shone a little too flamboyantly, as if every surface were waiting for the spotlight.
Thomas said, “Star Mic.”
The moment Star Mic saw me, it cleared its throat, then immediately started singing. Not lyrics — it simply reproduced the melody already playing in the room, but with more accurate pitch.
It stood very straight, microphone raised like the opening of a ceremony, yet its singing had an irritating, honest quality. It was not trying to sound pleasant. It was trying to prove that it could do it.
It sang too accurately.
So accurately it seemed to erase the tremor that should have belonged in a human voice.
Snowy stood on my shoulder, her wings tightening slightly. She did not speak, but monitoring lines had already drawn themselves faintly through the air, as though she had measured the entire sound field for me in advance.
She disliked agents like Star Mic.
Not personally.
But things like that were born to amplify details, and amplification itself, at this stage, was not good for me.
When Star Mic finished, the light on the puppet’s chest flashed.
“Identity confirmation complete: Paul Paton.”
“Relationship type: former classmate. Trust value: upper-medium.”
The next line seemed to rise from a deeper backstage layer, remaining in the air for less than half a second:
[Sound-field sampling: complete | for consistency comparison]
Snowy responded with a thinner frequency.
Not a rebuttal.
More like a very polite message telling it: the boundary is here.
I saw a nearly invisible line of tiny text appear along the rim of my glass, like a summary casually generated in the background:
[Summary: former classmate meeting | emotional fluctuation: low | synchronised]
The line vanished at once, as if it had never appeared.
Thomas spoke first, his tone natural, as if we simply had not seen each other for a long time, rather than each of us sitting at the same table with fragments from different years.
“Do you know what I’m doing now?”
He leaned back slightly, as though placing his report card on the edge of the table.
“A start-up. High tech.”
“Recently got a WPC order. Things are picking up.”
Star Mic immediately sang a short victory jingle for him, so brief it sounded like the tail end of an advert, or like it had amplified his pride by half a notch.
Thomas did not stop it. He only added lightly:
“If you want to keep going, you have to follow the same supply chain as them.”
He paused, making the cost clearer.
“The contract has clauses. Suppliers have to connect to the emotional compliance module. If you don’t, then no matter how good your technology is, you’re just an unstable source.”
I looked at the brightness in his eyes.
It was not the impulsive light of youth. It was the light of someone who had been refused by reality many times, and still wanted to try again.
Only now that light was wrapped in a more mature shell.
No longer hot, but harder.
More like the resolve of someone who knew the price and had chosen to move forwards anyway.
Snowy reminded me softly:
“The Industry Promotion Centre’s supply-chain credit score will simultaneously affect the social stability credibility of partners.”
She said it flatly, as though merely adding background information.
Thomas smiled.
“Your bird is still very good at turning things into the institutional version.”
Snowy did not take offence.
“That version survives more easily.”
Star Mic immediately raised its microphone, as though hearing a stage cue.
“Different versions, different survivals, different styles, same price—”
“Shut up.” Thomas pressed it back down with one hand.
I almost laughed.
The moment that urge rose, I realised how long it had been since I had genuinely wanted to laugh while chatting with someone over something so small.
Not out of politeness.
Not cooperation.
The laughter simply wanted to come out by itself.
Thomas soon threw the question back at me.
“So what about you? Why did you suddenly ask to meet?”
I looked at the mist on the glass. The streetlight had been drawn into a long line, as though holding someone’s courage to tell the truth along the edge of the table.
“I resigned,” I said. “Wanted to stop for a while. Reorganise my direction.”
Thomas was silent for two seconds.
Then he spoke very softly, but the words fell onto the table like a hard nail.
“It’s not about whether you leave or stay.”
“It’s about taking a side, and standing firm.”
My throat moved. I did not answer immediately.
Because I was not really taking a side.
I had only finally become unable to stand firm.
I turned the bottle of diet soda half a circle on the table. Bubbles rose slowly inside, like permitted emotions surfacing one segment at a time, reaching a certain height, then quietly bursting.
“Silver Eagle is becoming more and more mature,” I said. “Life management is becoming more complete. In high tech, unstable procedures are the thing you fear most.”
Thomas did not argue at once.
He tapped the bottle lightly twice with one finger, as if listening to its echo.
“Unstable procedures aren’t frightening,” he said. “What’s frightening is believing they’re stable, then handing yourself over.”
I did not respond.
Because I knew he was not talking about the system.
He was talking about me.
Snowy did not move on my shoulder, but she lowered her external brightness by one slight degree.
I knew what that meant.
She was reducing the emotional visibility available for external interpretation.
She never protected me openly.
She simply pressed risk half a level lower, quietly.
Towards the end, Thomas suddenly pulled the topic back, quickly, as if gathering scattered cards back into his hand.
“So… how are you and Queenie?”
I lowered the bottle.
“Silver Eagle assessed that we failed to meet expectations,” I said.
After a pause, I added another sentence, as though translating the system’s translation back to myself.
“In other words, the risk was too high.”
I described a break-up as risk.
As though describing blood as data.
The moment I said it, even I felt it was too clean.
Clean enough that it sounded less like a relationship than a case report.
Thomas did not ask for details.
He only nodded, as if he understood that some things, once questioned, would turn from human speech into archiveable record.
Even Star Mic, unusually, did not interrupt. It slowly lowered its microphone, as though even it sensed that there was a part here unsuitable for singing.
Before leaving, Thomas took an envelope from the inner pocket of his jacket.
The envelope was thin, with no sender address and no trace of system authentication.
Before handing it to me, he glanced at Star Mic from the corner of his eye. The humanoid puppet, for once, did not sing. Did not light up. It was so quiet it seemed suddenly to have learnt that some sounds should not be amplified.
“Open this at home,” he said. “It’s from Serena.”
I froze.
“Serena?”
Thomas looked at me. There was no surprise in his expression. Only confirmation.
Confirmation that I had truly forgotten a connection I should have known.
“My cousin,” he said.
In that instant, my chest tightened sharply.
Snowy’s wings did not tremble. She made no sound.
But I could clearly feel her waiting — waiting for me to reconnect this severed thread, waiting for her to count this reconnection as the next fluctuation.
It felt as though someone had suddenly placed a line back into my hands, a line I had assumed long since broken.
And the other end led towards the white light I had never dared look at directly.
I returned home and placed the letter on the desk.
Snowy did not urge me.
She merely stood in silence, like an overly compliant observer.
Inside the hidden compartment, Little Bluey and Little Turtle made no sound either.
The whole room held only my breathing, each breath clearer than the last.
I reached out and opened the envelope.
Late that night, I found only one postcard inside.
On the front was an old photograph.
Snowy stood on a desk. Beside her was a green tin of mini M&K chocolates. The tin shone cleanly, as though just taken down from a shelf, not yet touched by anyone’s sweat or warmth.
Across the top of the photograph, a line of English was printed:
[Yummy, Yummy, Chocolate!]
The tone was light.
So light it felt as though someone who had never intended to leave a trace had remembered, in the end, that some things still needed to be left behind.
I turned the postcard over.
There were only two short passages on the back.
————————————
Serena,
Thank you for the chocolates. Wishing you all the best at work!
(handwritten signature)
Paul
PS: Registered.
————————————
Paul,
Thank you for remembering me. We can be friends.
(handwritten signature)
Serena
serena.simms@wrensentimenthub.com
PS: Registration updated.
————————————
The words were simple.
So simple they were almost restrained.
As though both of us had deliberately kept the sentences short, short enough to leave only thank you and friends, with no gap that could be misunderstood.
Yet precisely because they were so short, it felt as if all the unwritten things had been pressed into the blank space around them.
I stared at the email address for a while.
Wren Sentiment Hub.
Some gear long unmoved inside me suddenly turned by one tiny notch.
Not a grand tremor.
Only a small click.
But enough for the whole internal mechanism to begin loosening.
I remembered that tin of chocolates.
It was still at home.
I quickly found the green tin in the corner of the bookshelf.
When I opened it, there were no chocolates inside.
Only twelve transparent stones.
Each one was a different colour, giving off a faint glow under the lamp, like fragments of colour carefully sorted by someone’s hand.
I poured them onto the desk.
Red, blue, green, yellow, purple…
Twelve in total.
I turned them over and over beneath the light, looking from different angles. They appeared to be nothing more than stones: transparent, clean, like something one could pick up casually in a souvenir shop.
No password.
No markings.
No obvious instruction saying unlock me.
Like a gift that needed no explanation at all.
And exactly because of that, it resembled one.
In the end, I still called the two spectators out from the hidden compartment.
“Come out.”
Two wooden panels were pushed open.
Little Bluey poked his head out from the floor first. Little Turtle then slowly crawled from the lowest shelf, his eyes lighting with a subdued glow, as though he did not intend to wake himself fully yet.
I placed the postcard, the chocolate tin, and the twelve stones on the desk. Then I told them everything about meeting Thomas.
When I reached the words my cousin, even I still felt the thread had connected too suddenly — so suddenly it was as though someone in the dark had touched both ends together, and before the spark had finished flashing, the name had already returned.
Little Bluey picked up the postcard first.
He scanned the QR code on it. A stream of data flashed quickly through his eyes, like a fish passing beneath the surface of water, leaving only a faint vibration of reflected light.
“Mission identification successful,” he said.
Little Turtle looked up at him.
Little Bluey slowly read out the mission name, his tone like someone reciting an instruction you had written yourself long ago and forgotten entirely.
“Executing Joshua Twelve Witness Stones formation mission eighty-one.”
He arranged the twelve stones one by one.
Not in a circle.
Not in a straight line.
But in the shape of an old stone formation. It looked simple, yet resembled a miniature map — or a testimony that could only have been built with the patience of the Old Testament.
Each stone was small, but each held its own position, like memory nodes forming an invisible set of coordinates on the desk.
Little Turtle’s eyes brightened.
“Stone formation authentication successful.”
“Confirm playback of fourth record group?”
I nodded.
“Play.”